Somewhere between Jim Crow & Post-Racialism: Reflections on the Racial Divide in America Today Lawrence D. Bobo © 2011 by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences LAWRENCED. BOBO, a Fellow of the American Academy since 2006, is the W.E.B. Du Bois Pro- fessor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University and a found- ing editor of the Du Bois Review. His publications include Racialized Politics: The Debate about Racism in America (with David O. Sears and James Sidanius, 2000), Urban In- equality: Evidence from Four Cities (with Alice O’Connor and Chris Tilly, 2001), and Prejudice in Poli- tics: Group Position, Public Opinion, and the Wisconsin Treaty Rights Dis- pute (with Mia Tuan, 2006). In assessing the results of the Negro revolution so far, it can be concluded that Negroes have estab- lished a foothold, no more. We have written a Dec- laration of Independence, itself an accomplishment, but the effort to transform the words into a life ex- perience still lies ahead. –Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go From Here? (1968) By the middle of the twentieth century, the color line was as well de½ned and as ½rmly entrenched as any institution in the land. After all, it was older than most institutions, including the federal govern- ment itself. More important, it informed the con- tent and shaped the lives of those institutions and the people who lived under them. –John Hope Franklin, The Color Line (1993) This is where we are right now. It’s a racial stale- mate we’ve been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naive as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy–particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own. –Barack H. Obama, “A More Perfect Union” (May 18, 2008)1 The year 1965 marked an important inflection point in the struggle for racial justice in the Unit- ed States, underscoring two fundamental points 11 about race in America.2 First, that racial inequality and division were not only Southern problems attached to Jim Crow segregation. Second, that the nature of those inequalities and divisions was a matter not merely of formal civil status and law, but also of deeply etched eco- nomic arrangements, social and politi- cal conditions, and cultural outlooks and practices. Viewed in full, the racial divide was a challenge of truly national reach, multilayered in its complexity and depth. Therefore, the achievement of basic citizenship rights in the South was a pivotal but far from exhaustive stage of the struggle. The positive trend of the times revolved around the achievement of voting rights. March 7, 1965, now known as Bloody Sun- day, saw police and state troopers attack several hundred peaceful civil rights pro- testors at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. The subsequent march from Selma to Montgomery, participat- ed in by tens of thousands, along with other protest act.

1. Somewhere between Jim Crow &
Post-Racialism: Reflections on the
Racial Divide in America Today
Lawrence D. Bobo
© 2011 by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences
LAWRENCED. BOBO, a Fellow
of the American Academy since
2006, is the W.E.B. Du Bois Pro-
fessor of the Social Sciences at
Harvard University and a found-
ing editor of the Du Bois Review.
His publications include Racialized
Politics: The Debate about Racism in
America (with David O. Sears and
James Sidanius, 2000), Urban In-
equality: Evidence from Four Cities
(with Alice O’Connor and Chris
Tilly, 2001), and Prejudice in Poli-
tics: Group Position, Public Opinion,
and the Wisconsin Treaty Rights Dis-
pute (with Mia Tuan, 2006).
In assessing the results of the Negro revolution so
far, it can be concluded that Negroes have estab-
lished a foothold, no more. We have written a Dec-
laration of Independence, itself an accomplishment,
but the effort to transform the words into a life ex-
perience still lies ahead.

2. –Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go
From Here? (1968)
By the middle of the twentieth century, the color
line was as well de½ned and as ½rmly entrenched
as any institution in the land. After all, it was older
than most institutions, including the federal govern-
ment itself. More important, it informed the con-
tent and shaped the lives of those institutions and
the people who lived under them.
–John Hope Franklin, The Color Line (1993)
This is where we are right now. It’s a racial stale-
mate we’ve been stuck in for years. Contrary to
the claims of some of my critics, black and white,
I have never been so naive as to believe that we can
get beyond our racial divisions in a single election
cycle, or with a single candidacy–particularly a
candidacy as imperfect as my own.
–Barack H. Obama, “A More Perfect Union”
(May 18, 2008)1
The year 1965 marked an important inflection
point in the struggle for racial justice in the Unit-
ed States, underscoring two fundamental points
11
about race in America.2 First, that racial
inequality and division were not only
Southern problems attached to Jim Crow
segregation. Second, that the nature of

3. those inequalities and divisions was a
matter not merely of formal civil status
and law, but also of deeply etched eco-
nomic arrangements, social and politi-
cal conditions, and cultural outlooks
and practices. Viewed in full, the racial
divide was a challenge of truly national
reach, multilayered in its complexity
and depth. Therefore, the achievement
of basic citizenship rights in the South
was a pivotal but far from exhaustive
stage of the struggle.
The positive trend of the times revolved
around the achievement of voting rights.
March 7, 1965, now known as Bloody Sun-
day, saw police and state troopers attack
several hundred peaceful civil rights pro-
testors at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in
Selma, Alabama. The subsequent march
from Selma to Montgomery, participat-
ed in by tens of thousands, along with
other protest actions, provided the pres-
sure that ½nally compelled Congress to
pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965. A tri-
umphant Reverend Martin Luther King,
Jr., and other activists attended the sign-
ing in Washington, D.C., on August 6,
1965. It was a moment of great triumph
for civil rights.
The long march to freedom seemed to
be at its apex, inspiring talk of an era of
“Second Reconstruction.” A decade ear-
lier, in the historic Brown v. Board of Edu-
cation decision of 1954, the U.S. Supreme

4. Court repudiated the “separate but equal”
doctrine. Subsequently, a major civil rights
movement victory was achieved with the
passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,
which forbade discrimination in employ-
ment and in most public places. With vot-
ing rights now protected as well, and the
federal government authorized to inter-
vene directly to assure those rights, one
might have expected 1965 to stand as a
moment of shimmering and untarnished
civil rights progress. Yet the mood of
optimism and triumph did not last for
long.
The negative trend of the times was
epitomized by deep and explosive inequal-
ities and resentments of race smoldering
in many Northern, urban ghettos. The
extent to which the “race problem” was
not just a Southern problem of civil rights,
but a national problem of inequality wo-
ven deep into our economic and cultural
fabric, would quickly be laid bare follow-
ing passage of the Voting Rights Act.
Scarcely ½ve days after then-President
Johnson signed the bill into law, the Los
Angeles community of Watts erupted
into flames. Quelling the disorder, which
raged for roughly six days, required the
mobilization of the National Guard and
nearly ½fteen thousand troops. When
disorder ½nally subsided, thirty-four
people had died, more than one thou-
sand had been injured, well over three

5. thousand were arrested, and approxi-
mately $35 million in property damage
had been done. Subsequent studies and
reports revealed patterns of police abuse,
political marginalization, intense pover-
ty, and myriad forms of economic, hous-
ing, and social discrimination as contrib-
uting to the mix of conditions that led
to the riots.
It was thus more than ½tting that in
1965, Dædalus committed two issues to
examining the conditions of “The Negro
American.” The essays were wide-rang-
ing. The topics addressed spanned ques-
tions of power, demographic change,
economic conditions, politics and civil
status, religion and the church, family
and community dynamics, as well as
group identity, racial attitudes, and the
future of race relations. Scholars from
most social scienti½c ½elds, including
anthropology, economics, history, law,
12
Somewhere
between
Jim Crow
& Post-
Racialism
Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts &
Sciences

6. political science, psychology, and sociol-
ogy, contributed to the volumes. No sin-
gle theme or message dominated these
essays. Instead, the volumes wrestled with
the multidimensional and complex pat-
terns of a rapidly changing racial terrain.
Some critical observations stand out
from two of those earlier essays, which
have been ampli½ed and made center-
pieces of much subsequent social science
scholarship. Sociologist and anthropol-
ogist St. Clair Drake drew a distinction
between what he termed primary victim-
ization and indirect victimization. Primary
victimization involved overt discrimina-
tion in the labor market that imposed a
job ceiling on the economic opportuni-
ties available to blacks alongside hous-
ing discrimination and segregation that
relegated blacks to racially distinct urban
ghettos. Indirect or secondary victimi-
zation involved the multidimensional
and cumulative disadvantages resulting
from primary victimization. These con-
sequences included poorer schooling,
poor health, and greater exposure to dis-
order and crime. In a related vein, sociol-
ogist Daniel Patrick Moynihan stressed
the central importance of employment
prospects in the wake of the civil rights
victories that secured the basic citizen-
ship rights of African Americans. Both

7. Drake and Moynihan expressed concern
about a black class structure marked by
signs of a large and growing economical-
ly marginalized segment of the black com-
munity. Drake went so far as to declare,
“If Negroes are not to become a perma-
nent lumpen-proletariat within Amer-
ican society as a result of social forces
already at work and increased automa-
tion, deliberate planning by governmen-
tal and private agencies will be necessary.”
Striking a similar chord, Moynihan assert-
ed: “[T]here would also seem to be no
question that opportunities for a large
mass of Negro workers in the lower rang-
es of training and education have not
been improving, that in many ways the
circumstances of these workers relative to
the white work force have grown worse.”
This marginalized economic status, both
scholars suggested, would have ramify-
ing effects, including weakening family
structures in ways likely to worsen the
challenges faced by black communities.3
If the scholarly assessments of 1965
occurred against a backdrop of powerful
and transformative mass-based movement
for civil rights and an inchoate sense of
deep but imminent change, the backdrop
for most scholarly assessments today is
the election of Barack Obama as president
of the United States, the rise of a potent
narrative of post-racialism, and a sense
of stalemate or stagnation in racial change.

8. Many meanings or interpretations can be
attached to the term post-racial. In its sim-
plest and least controversial form, the
term is intended merely to signal a hope-
ful trajectory for events and social trends,
not an accomplished fact of social life.
It is something toward which we as a
nation still strive and remain guarded-
ly hopeful about fully achieving. Three
other meanings of post-racialism are
½lled with more grounds for dispute and
controversy. One of these meanings at-
taches to the waning salience of what
some have portrayed as a “black victim-
ology” narrative. From this perspective,
black complaints and grievances about
inequality and discrimination are well-
worn tales, at least passé if not now
pointedly false assessments of the main
challenges facing blacks in a world large-
ly free of the dismal burdens of overt
racial divisions and oppression.4
A second and no less controversial
view of post-racialism takes the position
that the level and pace of change in the
demographic makeup and the identity
choices and politics of Americans are
rendering the traditional black-white
13
Lawrence D.
Bobo
140 (2) Spring 2011

9. divide irrelevant. Accordingly, Americans
increasingly revere mixture and hybridi-
ty and are rushing to embrace a decided-
ly “beige” view of themselves and what
is good for the body politic. Old-fashioned
racial dichotomies pale against the surge
toward flexible, deracialized, and mixed
ethnoracial identities and outlooks.5
A third, and perhaps the most contro-
versial, view of post-racialism has the
most in common with the well-rehearsed
rhetoric of color blindness. To wit, Amer-
ican society, or at least a large and steadi-
ly growing fraction of it, has genuinely
moved beyond race–so much so that we
as a nation are now ready to transcend
the disabling racial divisions of the past.
From this perspective, nothing symbol-
izes better the moment of transcendence
than Obama’s election as president. This
transcendence is said to be especially true
of a younger generation, what New Yorker
editor David Remnick has referred to as
“the Joshua Generation.” More than any
other, this generation is ready to cross
the great river of racial identity, division,
and acrimony that has for so long de½ned
American culture and politics.
It is in this context of the ½rst African
American president of the United States
and the rise to prominence of the narra-

10. tive of post-racialism that a group of social
scientists were asked to examine, from
many different disciplinary and intellec-
tual vantage points, changes in the racial
divide since the time of the Dædalus issues
focusing on race in 1965 and 1966.
The context today has points of great
discontinuity and of great similarity to
that mid-1960s inflection point. From the
viewpoint of 1965, the election of Obama
as the ½rst African American president
of the United States, as well as the expan-
sion and the cultural prominence and
success of the black middle class of which
Obama is a member, speak to the enor-
mous and enduring successes of the civil
rights era. Yet also from the standpoint
of 1965, the persistence of deep poverty
and joblessness for a large fraction of the
black population, slowly changing rates
of residential segregation by race, con-
tinued evidence of antiblack discrimina-
tion in many domains of life, and histor-
ically high rates of black incarceration
signal a journey toward racial justice that
remains, even by super½cial accounting,
seriously incomplete.
In order to set a context for the essays
contained in this volume, I address three
key questions in this introduction. The
½rst concerns racial boundaries. In an
era of widespread talk of having achieved
the post-racial society, do we have real

11. evidence that attention to and the mean-
ing of basic race categories are funda-
mentally breaking down? The second
set of questions concerns the extent of
economic inequality along the racial di-
vide. Has racial economic inequality nar-
rowed to a point where we need no longer
think or talk of black disadvantage? Or
have the bases of race-linked economic
inequality changed so much that, at the
least, the dynamics of discrimination
and prejudice no longer need concern
us? The third question is, how have
racial attitudes changed in the period
since the mid-1960s Dædalus issues?
To foreshadow a bit, I will show that
basic racial boundaries are not quickly
and inevitably collapsing, though they
are changing and under great pressure.
Racial economic inequality is less ex-
treme today, there is a substantial black
middle class, and inequality within the
black population itself has probably
never been greater. Yet there remain
large and durable patterns of black-
white economic inequality as well, pat-
terns that are not overcome or eliminat-
ed even for the middle class and that
still rest to a signi½cant degree on dis-
14
Somewhere
between

12. Jim Crow
& Post-
Racialism
Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts &
Sciences
criminatory social processes. In addition,
I maintain that we continue to witness
the erosion and decline of Jim Crow rac-
ist attitudes in the United States. How-
ever, in their place has emerged a new
pattern of attitudes and beliefs, various-
ly labeled symbolic racism, modern racism,
color-blind racism, or as I prefer it, laissez-
faire racism. The new form of racism is a
more covert, sophisticated, culture-cen-
tered, and subtle racist ideology, quali-
tatively less extreme and more socially
permeable than Jim Crow racism with
its attendant biological foundations and
calls for overt discrimination. But this
new racism yields a powerful influence
in our culture and politics.6
Consider ½rst the matter of group
boundaries. The 2000 Census broke
new ground by allowing individuals to
mark more than one box in designating
racial background. Indeed, great politi-
cal pressure and tumult led to the deci-
sion to move the Census in a direction
that more formally and institutionally

13. acknowledged the presence of increas-
ing mixture and heterogeneity in the
American population with regard to
racial background. Nearly seven million
people exercised that option in 2000. The
successful rise of Obama to the of½ce
of president, the ½rst African American
to do so, as a child of a white American
mother and a black Kenyan father, has
only accelerated the sense of the new-
found latitude and recognition granted
to those who claim more than one racial
heritage.7
Despite Obama’s electoral success and
the press attention given to the phenom-
enon, some will no doubt ½nd it surpris-
ing that the overwhelming majority of
Americans identify with only one race.
As Figure 1 shows, less than 2 percent of
the population marked more than one
box on the 2000 Census in designating
their racial background. Fully 98 percent
marked just one. I claim no deep-rooted-
ness or profound personal salience for
these identities. Rather, my point is that
we should be mindful that the level of
“discussion” and contention around mix-
ture is far out of proportion to the extent
to which most Americans actually desig-
nate and see themselves in these terms.
Moreover, even if we restrict attention
to just those who marked more than one
box, two-thirds of these respondents des-

14. ignated two groups other than blacks
(namely, Hispanic-white, Asian-white,
or Hispanic and Asian mixtures), as Fig-
ure 2 shows. Some degree of mixture with
black constituted just under a third of
mixed race identi½ers in 2000. Given the
historic size of the black population and
the extended length of contact with white
Americans, this remarkable result says
something powerful about the potency
and durability of the historic black-white
divide.
It is worth recalling that sexual rela-
tions and childbearing across the racial
divide are not recent phenomena. The
1890 U.S. Census contained categories
for not only “Negro” but also “Mulatto,”
“Quadroon,” and even “Octoroon”;
these were clear signs of the extent of
“mixing” that had taken place in the
United States. Indeed, well over one
million individuals fell into one of the
mixed race categories at that time. In
order to protect the institution of slav-
ery and to prevent the offspring of white
slave masters and exploited black slave
women from having a claim on freedom
as well as on the property of the master,
slave status, as de½ned by law, followed
the mother’s status, not the father’s.
For most of its history, the United States
legally barred or discouraged racial mix-
ing and intermarriage. At the time of
the Loving v. Virginia case in 1967, seven-
teen states still banned racial intermar-

15. riage.8
15
Lawrence D.
Bobo
140 (2) Spring 2011
16
Somewhere
between
Jim Crow
& Post-
Racialism
Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts &
Sciences
Source: Author’s analysis of data from U.S. Census Bureau,
Census 2000 Redistricting (Public Law 94-171)
Summary File, 2001, Table PL1.
Figure 1
Percent of Respondents to U.S. Census 2000 Identifying with
One Race or Two or More Races
(Non-Hispanic)
Figure 2
Percent of Respondents to U.S. Census 2000 Identifying with
Two or More Races Who Chose

16. Black in Combination with One or More Other Races (Non-
Hispanic)
Source: Author’s analysis of data from U.S. Census Bureau,
Census 2000 Summary File 1, 2001,
Matrices P8 and P10.
Formal, legal de½nitions of who was
black, and especially the development
of rules of “hypodescent,” or the one-
drop rule, have a further implication
that is often lost in discussions of race:
these practices tended to fuse together
race and class, in effect making black-
ness synonymous with the very bottom
of the class structure. As historian
David Hollinger explains:
The combination of hypodescent with the
denial to blacks residing in many states with
large black populations of any opportunity
for legal marriage to whites ensured that
the color line would long remain to a very
large extent a property line. Hence the dy-
namics of race formation and the dynam-
ics of class formation were, in this most
crucial of all American cases, largely the
same. This is one of the most important
truths about the history of the United
States brought into sharper focus when
that history is viewed through the lens
of the question of ethnoracial mixture.9
Still, we know that today the ethno-

17. racial landscape in the United States is
changing. As of the 2000 Census, whites
constituted just 69 percent of the U.S.
population, with Hispanics and blacks
each around 12 percent. This distribu-
tion represents a substantial decline in
the percentage of whites from twenty
or, even more so, forty years ago.
With continued immigration, differ-
ential group fertility patterns, and the
continued degree of intermarriage and
mixing, these patterns will not remain
stable. Figure 3 shows the Census racial
distribution projections out to the year
2050. The ½gure clearly shows a contin-
ued steady and rapid decline in the rela-
tive size of the white population; fore-
casts predict that somewhere between
2040 and 2045, whites will cease to be
a numerical majority of the population.
(This change could possibly happen
much sooner than that.) The relative size
of the Hispanic population is expected to
grow substantially, with the black, Asian,
Native Hawaiian and other Paci½c Island-
er, American Indian, and Alaska Native
groups remaining relatively constant.
Figure 3 strongly implies that pressure
to transform our understanding of ra-
cial categories will continue.
Does that pressure for change foretell
the ultimate undoing of the black-white
divide? At least three lines of research

18. raise doubts about such a forecast. First,
studies of the perceptions of and identi-
ties among those of mixed racial back-
grounds point to strong evidence of the
cultural persistence of the one-drop rule.
Systematic experiments by sociologists
and social psychologists are intriguing
in this regard. For example, sociologist
Melissa Herman’s recent research con-
cluded that “others’ perceptions shape a
person’s identity and social understand-
ings of race. My study found that part-
black multiracial youth are more likely
to be seen as black by observers and to
de½ne themselves as black when forced
to choose one race.”10
Second, studies of patterns in racial
intermarriage point to a highly durable
if somewhat less extreme black-white
divide today. A careful assessment of ra-
cial intermarriage patterns in 1990 by
demographer Vincent Kang Fu found
that “one key feature of the data is over-
whelming endogamy for blacks and
whites. At least 92 percent of white men,
white women, black women and black
men are married to members of their own
group.”11 Rates of intermarriage rose for
blacks and whites over the course of the
1990s. However, subsequent analysts con-
tinued to stress the degree to which a fun-
damental black-white divide persists. As
demographers Zhenchao Qian and Daniel
Lichter conclude in their analyses of U.S.
Census data from 1990 and 2000:

19. 17
Lawrence D.
Bobo
140 (2) Spring 2011
[O]ur results also highlight a singularly
persistent substantive lesson: African
Americans are least likely of all racial/
ethnic minorities to marry whites. And,
although the pace of marital assimilation
among African Americans proceeded
more rapidly over the 1990s than it did
in earlier decades, the social boundaries
between African American and whites re-
main highly rigid and resilient to change.
The “one-drop” rule apparently persists
for African Americans.12
Third, some key synthetic works argue
for an evolving racial scheme in the Unit-
ed States, but a scheme that nonetheless
preserves a heavily stigmatized black cat-
egory. A decade ago, sociologist Herbert
Gans offered the provocative but well-
grounded speculation that the United
States would witness a transition from
a society de½ned by a great white–non-
white divide to one increasingly de½ned
by a black–non-black ½ssure, with an
in-between or residual category for those

20. granted provisional or “honorary white”
status. As Gans explained: “If current
trends persist, today’s multiracial hierar-
chy could be replaced by what I think of
as a dual or bimodal one consisting of
‘nonblack’ and ‘black’ population cate-
gories, with a third ‘residual’ category
for the groups that do not, or do not yet,
½t into the basic dualism.” Most trou-
bling, this new dualism would, in Gans’s
expectations, continue to bring a pro-
found sense of undeservingness and stig-
ma for those assigned its bottom rung.13
Gans’s remarks have recently received
substantial support from demographer
Frank Bean and his colleagues. Based on
their extensive analyses of population
trends across a variety of indicators, Bean
and colleagues write: “A black-nonblack
divide appears to be taking shape in the
United States, in which Asians and Lati-
nos are closer to whites. Hence, Ameri-
18
Somewhere
between
Jim Crow
& Post-
Racialism
Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts &
Sciences

21. Figure 3
Population Projections by Race and Ethnicity, 2000 to 2050
Source: Author’s analysis of data on race from Population
Division, U.S. Census Bureau, Projected Popula-
tion by Single Year of Age, Sex, Race, and Hispanic Origin for
the United States: July 1, 2000 to July 1, 2050
(August 14, 2008).
ca’s color lines are moving toward a new
demarcation that places many blacks in
a position of disadvantage similar to that
resulting from the traditional black-white
divide.”
If basic racial categories and identities
are not soon to dissolve, then let me now
address that second set of questions, con-
cerning the degree of racial economic in-
equality. I should begin by noting that
there has been considerable expansion in
the size, security, and, arguably, salience
and influence of the black middle class.14
Turning to the question of income, we
½nd a similar trend. Figure 4 reports on
the distribution of the population by race
since 1968 across several ways of slicing
the family income distribution. At the
very bottom are those who the Census
would designate as the “very poor”: that
is, having a family income that is 50 per-
cent or less of the poverty level. At the very

22. top are those in the “comfortable” cate-
gory, having family incomes that are ½ve
times or more the poverty level. The pro-
portion of whites in this upper category
exceeded 10 percent in 1960 and rose to
nearly 30 percent by 2008. For blacks, the
proportion was less than 5 percent in 1968
but about 12 percent in 2008. Likewise,
the fraction in the middle class (those
with family incomes more than twice
the poverty level) grows for both groups.
But crucially, the proportion of blacks in
the “poor” (at the poverty line) or “very
poor” categories remains large, at a com-
bined ½gure of nearly 40 percent in 2008.
This contrasts with the roughly 20 per-
cent of whites in those same categories.15
The of½cial black poverty rate has fluc-
tuated between two to three times the pov-
erty rate for whites. Recent trend analy-
ses suggest that this disparity declined
during the economic boom years of the
1990s but remained substantial. As pub-
lic policy analyst Michael Stoll explains:
“Among all black families, the poverty
rate declined from a 20 year high of about
40 percent in 1982 and 1993 to 25 percent
in 2000. During this period, the poverty
rate for white families remained fairly
constant, at about 10 percent.” That ½g-
ure of 25 percent remains true through
more recent estimates. In addition, the
Great Recession has taken a particular-
ly heavy toll on minority communities,

23. African Americans perhaps most of all.
As the Center for American Progress
declared in a recent report: “Economic
security and losses during the recession
and recovery exacerbated the already
weak situation for African Americans.
They experienced declining employment
rates, rising poverty rates, falling home-
ownership rates, decreasing health in-
surance and retirement coverage during
the last business cycle from 2001 to 2007.
The recession that followed made a bad
situation much worse.”16
Overall trends in poverty, however,
do not fully capture the cumulative and
multidimensional nature of black eco-
nomic disadvantage. Sociologist William
Julius Wilson stresses how circumstances
of persistently weak employment pros-
pects and joblessness, particularly for
low-skilled black men, weaken the for-
mation of stable two-parent households
and undermine other community struc-
tures. Persistent economic hardship and
weakened social institutions then create
circumstances that lead to rising rates of
single-parent households, out-of-wed-
lock childbearing, welfare dependency,
and greater risk of juvenile delinquency
and involvement in crime. Harvard so-
ciologist Robert Sampson points to an
extraordinary circumstance of exposure
to living in deeply disadvantaged com-
munities for large segments of the Afri-
can American population. This disad-

24. vantage involves living in conditions
that expose residents to high surround-
19
Lawrence D.
Bobo
140 (2) Spring 2011
ing rates of unemployment, family break-
up, individuals and families reliant on
welfare, poor-performing schools, juve-
nile delinquency, and crime. As Sampson
explains:
[A]lthough we knew that the average na-
tional rate of family disruption and pov-
erty among blacks was two to four times
higher than among whites, the number
of distinct ecological contexts in which
blacks achieve equality to whites is strik-
ing. In not one city of 100,000 or more in
the United States do blacks live in ecologi-
cal equality with whites when it comes to
these basic features of economic and fami-
ly organization. Accordingly, racial differ-
ences in poverty and family disruption are
so strong that the “worst” urban contexts
in which whites reside are considerably
better than the average context of black
communities.17

25. 20
Somewhere
between
Jim Crow
& Post-
Racialism
Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts &
Sciences
Figure 4
Economic Status of the Black and White Population, 1968 to
2008
Very poor denotes below 50 percent of the poverty line; poor,
50 to 90 percent of the poverty line; near poor,
100 to 199 percent of the poverty line; middle class, 200 to 499
percent of the poverty line; and comfortable,
500 percent of poverty line. Source: Author’s analysis of data
from Miriam King, Steven Ruggles, Trent
Alexander, Donna Leicach, and Matthew Sobek, Integrated
Public Use Microdata Series, Current Population
Survey: Version 2.0 (Minneapolis: Minnesota Population
Center, 2008).
Recent work published by sociologist
Patrick Sharkey assesses race differences
in the chances of mobility out of impov-
erished neighborhoods. The result is a
very depressing one. He ½nds evidence
of little upward social mobility for disad-

26. vantaged blacks and a fragile capacity to
maintain advantaged status among even
the most well-off African Americans. He
writes: “[M]ore than 70% of black chil-
dren who are raised in the poorest quar-
ter of American neighborhoods will con-
tinue to live in the poorest quarter of
neighborhoods as adults. Since the 1970s,
more than half of black families have
lived in the poorest quarter of neighbor-
hoods in consecutive generations, com-
pared to just 7% of white families.” Dis-
cussing the upper end, Sharkey writes:
“Among the small number of black fam-
ilies who live in the top quartile, only 35%
remain there in the second generation.
By themselves, these ½gures reveal the
striking persistence of neighborhood
disadvantage among black families.”
This ½gure of 35 percent remaining in
the top quartile across generations for
blacks contrasts to 63 percent among
whites. Thus, “White families exhibit
a high rate of mobility out of the poor-
est neighborhoods and a low rate of mo-
bility out of the most affluent neighbor-
hoods, and the opposite is true among
black families.”18
The general labor market prospects of
African Americans have undergone key
changes in the last several decades. Three
patterns loom large. There is far more in-
ternal differentiation and inequality with-
in the black population than was true at
the close of World War II, or even during

27. our baseline of the mid-1960s. The for-
tunes of men and women have recently
diverged within the black community.
Black women have considerably narrowed
the gap between themselves and white
women in terms of educational attain-
ment, major occupational categories, and
earnings. Black men have faced a growing
problem of economic marginalization.
Importantly, this is contingent on levels
of education; education has become a
far sharper dividing line, shaping life
chances more heavily than ever before
in the black community.19
Several other dimensions of socioeco-
nomic status bear mentioning. Even by
conservative estimates, the high school
dropout rate among blacks is twice that
of whites, at 20 percent versus 11 percent.
Blacks also have much lower college com-
pletion rates (17 percent versus 30 per-
cent) and lower advanced degree com-
pletion rates (6 percent versus 11 percent).
These differences are enormously conse-
quential. As the essays in this volume by
economist James Heckman and social
psychologist Richard Nisbett emphasize,
educational attainment and achievement
increasingly de½ne access to the good
life, broadly de½ned. Moreover, some
scholars make a strong case that impor-
tant inequalities in resources still plague
the educational experiences of many
black school children, involving such

28. factors as fewer well-trained teachers
and less access to ap courses and other
curriculum-enriching materials and
experiences.20
One of the major social trends affect-
ing African Americans over the past sev-
eral decades has been the sharply puni-
tive and incarceration-focused turn in
the American criminal justice system.
Between 1980 and 2000, the rate of black
incarceration nearly tripled. The black-
to-white incarceration ratio increased to
above eight to one during this time peri-
od. Actuarial forecasts, or lifetime esti-
mates, of the risk of incarceration for
black males born in the 1990s approach
one in three, as compared to below one
in ten for non-Hispanic white males. A
recent major study by the Pew Founda-
21
Lawrence D.
Bobo
140 (2) Spring 2011
tion reported that as of 2007, one in ½f-
teen black males age eighteen and above
was in jail or prison, and one in nine black
males between the ages of twenty and
thirty-four was in jail or prison. Blacks
constitute a hugely disproportionate share

29. of those incarcerated relative to their
numbers in the general population.21
The reach of mass incarceration has
risen to such levels that some analysts
view it as altering normative life-course
experiences for blacks in low-income
neighborhoods. Indeed, the fabric of so-
cial life changes in heavily policed, low-
income urban communities. The degree
of incarceration has prompted scholars
to describe the change as ushering in a
new fourth stage of racial oppression,
“the carceral state,” constituted by the
emergence of “the new Jim Crow” or,
more narrowly, racialized mass incar-
ceration. Whichever label one employs,
there is no denying that exposure to the
criminal justice system touches the lives
of a large fraction of the African Ameri-
can population, especially young men of
low education and skill levels. These low
levels of education and greater exposure
to poverty, along with what many regard
as the racially biased conduct of the War
on Drugs, play a huge role in black over-
representation in jails or federal and
state prisons.22
Processes of racial residential segrega-
tion are a key factor in contemporary ra-
cial inequality. Despite important declines
in overall rates of segregation over the
past three decades and blacks’ increasing
suburbanization, blacks remain highly
segregated from whites. Some have sug-

30. gested that active self-segregation on the
part of blacks is now a major factor sus-
taining residential segregation. A num-
ber of careful investigations of prefer-
ences for neighborhood characteristics
and makeup and of the housing search
process strongly challenge such claims.
Instead, there is substantial evidence
that, particularly among white Ameri-
cans, neighborhoods and social spaces
are strongly racially coded, with negative
racial stereotypes playing a powerful role
in shaping the degree of willingness to
enter (or remain) in racially integrated
living spaces. Moreover, careful auditing
studies continue to show lower, but still
signi½cant, rates of antiblack discrimi-
nation on the part of real estate agents,
homeowners, and landlords.23
Lastly, I want to stress that wealth in-
equality between blacks and whites re-
mains enormous. Recent scholarship
has convincingly argued that wealth (or
accumulated assets) is a crucial determi-
nant of quality of life. Blacks at all levels
of the class hierarchy typically possess
far less wealth than otherwise compara-
ble whites. Moreover, the composition
of black wealth is more heavily based in
homes and automobiles as compared to
white wealth, which includes a more
even spread across savings, stocks and
bonds, business ownership, and other
more readily liquidated assets. Whereas

31. approximately 75 percent of whites own
their homes, only 47 percent of blacks
do. Looking beyond homeownership to
the full range of ½nancial assets, analy-
ses from sociologists Melvin Oliver and
Tom Shapiro put the black-to-white
wealth gap ratio in the range of ten or
eleven to one. Other estimates, such as
those based on Panel Study of Income
Dynamics data, are lower but still repre-
sent gaping disparities.24
In order to provide a more concrete
picture of the current state of the wealth
gap, Figure 5 reproduces results from a
recent Brandeis University study. It shows
that over the past twenty-three years, the
black-white gap in median wealth rose
dramatically, moving from $20,000 in
1984 to nearly $100,000 by 2007. The
study also revealed that for much of this
22
Somewhere
between
Jim Crow
& Post-
Racialism
Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts &
Sciences

32. time period, middle-income white fami-
lies had more wealth than even the high-
est income segment of African American
families, with that gap rising to $56,000
by 2007. Moreover, all earners, but espe-
cially African Americans, have fallen far
behind the high-income white families
in median wealth holdings. To the extent
that wealth bears on the capacity to sur-
vive a period of unemployment, to ½nance
college for one’s children, or to endure
a costly illness or other unexpected large
expense, these ½gures point to an enor-
mous and growing disparity in the life
chances of blacks and whites in the
United States.25
In many respects, these sizable gaps in
wealth associated with race are one of the
principal ways in which the cumulative
and “sedimentary” impact of a long his-
tory of racial oppression manifests itself.
Research has shown that black and white
families do not differ substantially in the
extent to which they try to save income.
Much wealth is inherited; it is not the
product of strictly individual merit or
achievement. Furthermore, social poli-
cy in many ways played a direct role in
facilitating the accumulation of wealth
for many generations of white Ameri-
cans while systematically constraining
or undermining such opportunities for
African Americans. For example, Oliver

33. and Shapiro and political scientist Ira
Katznelson both point to federal home
mortgage lending guidelines and prac-
tices, which were once openly discrimi-
natory, as playing a crucial role in this
process.26
What do we know about changes in
racial attitudes in the United States? The
½rst and most consistent ½nding of the
major national studies of racial attitudes
in the United States has been a steady
repudiation of the outlooks that sup-
ported the Jim Crow social order. Jim
Crow racism once reigned in American
23
Lawrence D.
Bobo
140 (2) Spring 2011
Figure 5
Median Wealth Holdings of White Families and African
American Families, 1984 to 2007
Data do not include home equity. Source: Thomas Shapiro,
Tatjana Meschede, and Laura Sullivan, “The Racial
Wealth Gap Increases Fourfold,” Research and Policy Brief,
Institute on Assets and Social Policy, Heller School
for Social Policy and Management, Brandeis University, May
2010.

34. society, particularly in the South. Accord-
ingly, blacks were understood as inher-
ently inferior to whites, both intellectu-
ally and temperamentally. As a result,
society was to be expressly ordered in
terms of white privilege, with blacks rel-
egated to secondary status in education,
access to jobs, and in civic status such as
the right to vote. Above all, racial mix-
ture was to be avoided; hence, society
needed to be segregated. The best survey
data on American public opinion suggest
that this set of ideas has been in steady
retreat since the 1940s.27
Figure 6 contains one telling illustration
of this trend. It shows the percentage of
white Americans in national surveys who
said that they would not be willing to vote
for a quali½ed black candidate for pres-
ident if nominated by their own party.
When ½rst asked in 1958, nearly two out
of three white Americans endorsed such
an openly discriminatory posture. That
trend has undergone unabated decline,
reaching the point where roughly only
one in ½ve white Americans expressed
this view by the time the Reverend Jesse
Jackson launched his ½rst bid for the
Democratic presidential nomination in
1984. It declined to fewer than one in ten
by the time of Obama’s campaign in 2008.
In broad sweep, though not necessari-
ly in exact levels, the trend seen in Figure

35. 6 is true of most questions on racial atti-
tudes from national surveys that deal with
broad principles of whether American
society should be integrated or segregat-
ed, discriminatory or nondiscriminatory
on the basis of race. Whether the speci½c
domain involved school integration, res-
idential integration, or even racial inter-
marriage, the level of endorsement of
discriminatory, segregationist responses
has continued to decline. To an impor-
24
Somewhere
between
Jim Crow
& Post-
Racialism
Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts &
Sciences
Figure 6
Percent of Whites Who Said They Would Not Vote for a Black
Presidential Candidate,
1958 to 2008
The Gallup Poll asked, “If your party nominated a generally
well-quali½ed person for president who happened
to be black, would you vote for that person?” The General
Social Survey (gss) asked, “If your party nominated
a (negro/black/African-American) for President, would you vote
for him if he were quali½ed for the job?”

36. Source: Author’s analysis of data from Gallup Poll, 1958–2007;
Jeffrey M. Jones, “Some Americans Reluctant to
Vote for Mormon, 72-Year-Old Presidential Candidates,” in The
Gallup Poll: Public Opinion 2007, ed. George
Horace Gallup (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Little½eld, 2008),
77–78; author’s analysis of data from gss
Cumulative Data File, 1972–2008.
tant degree, these changes have been led
by highly educated whites and those out-
side the South. African Americans have
never endorsed elements of the Jim Crow
outlook to any substantial degree, though
many of these questions were not initial-
ly asked of black respondents out of fear
that the questions would be regarded as
an insult, or to the assumption that their
responses were predictable.
This picture of the repudiation of Jim
Crow is complicated somewhat by evi-
dence of signi½cant social distance pref-
erences. To be sure, low and typically
declining percentages of whites objected
when asked about entering into integrat-
ed social settings–neighborhoods or
schools–where one or just a small num-
ber of blacks might be present. But as the
number of blacks involved increased,
and as one shifts from more impersonal
and public domains of life (workplaces,
schools, neighborhoods) to more inti-
mate and personal domains (intermar-
riage), expressed levels of white resis-

37. tance rise and the degree of positive
change is not as great.
The notion of the 1960s as an inflection
point in the struggle for racial change is
reinforced by the growing preoccupation
of studies of racial attitudes in the post-
1960 period with matters of public policy.
These studies consider levels of support
or opposition to public policies designed
to bring about greater racial equality
(antidiscrimination laws and various
forms of af½rmative action) and actual
integration (open housing laws and meth-
ods of school desegregation such as school
busing). The picture that results is com-
plex but has several recurrent features.
Blacks are typically far more supportive
of social-policy intervention on matters
of race than are whites. In general, sup-
port for policy or governmental interven-
tion to bring about greater integration or
to reduce racial inequality lags well be-
hind endorsement of similar broad prin-
ciples or ideals. This ½nding has led many
scholars to note a “principle-implemen-
tation gap.” Some policies, however, have
wider appeal than others. Efforts to en-
hance or improve the human capital attri-
butes of blacks and other minority group
members are more popular than policies
that call for group preferences. Forms of
af½rmative action that imply quotas or
otherwise disregard meritocratic criteria
of reward are deeply unpopular.

38. One important line of investigation
seeking to understand the principle-
implementation gap involved assess-
ments of perceptions and causal attribu-
tions for racial inequality. To the extent
that many individuals do not perceive
much racial inequality, or explain it in
terms of individual dispositions and
choices (as opposed to structural con-
straints and conditions such as discrim-
ination), then there is little need seen
for government action. Table 1 shows
responses to a series of questions on
possible causes of black-white econom-
ic inequality that included “less inborn
ability,” “lack of motivation and will-
power,” “no chance for an education,”
and “mainly due to discrimination.”
The questions thus span biological basis
(ability), cultural basis (motivation),
a weak form of structural constraint
(education), and ½nally, a strong struc-
tural constraint (discrimination).28
There is low and decreasing support
among whites for the overtly racist belief
that blacks have less inborn ability. The
most widely endorsed account among
whites points to a lack of motivation or
willpower on the part of blacks as a key
factor in racial inequality, though this
attribution declines over time. Attribu-
tions to discrimination as well as to the
weaker structural account of lack of a
chance for education also decline among

39. whites. Blacks are generally far more
25
Lawrence D.
Bobo
140 (2) Spring 2011
Somewhere
between
Jim Crow
& Post-
Racialism
Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts &
Sciences26
Table 1
Explanations for Racial Socioeconomic Inequality by Education
and Age across Selected Years
Whites
Inequality is Due to: Years of Education Age
Pooled < 12 12 13+ 18–33 34–50
51+
Discrimination 1977–1989 40% 40 37
43 46 39 36
1990–1999 35 47 32 36

40. 35 34 35
2000–2008 30 30 27 32
31 28 32
Less Inborn Ability 1977–1989 21 36 22
11 12 16 35
1990–1999 13 27 16 6
7 8 22
2000–2008 9 20 13 5 6
7 13
Lack of Chance 1977–1989 52 42 48
63 55 52 49
for Education 1990–1999 47 37 41
55 46 49 47
2000–2008 43 33 36 49
41 45 44
Lack of Motivation 1977–1989 63 74
67 51 54 62 72
or Willpower 1990–1999 55 70 63
46 50 50 65
2000–2008 50 66 61 41 45
45 57
Blacks
Inequality is Due to: Years of Education Age
Pooled < 12 12 13+ 18–33 34–50

41. 51+
Discrimination 1977–1989 77% 82 72
76 75 79 79
1990–1999 71 74 68 73
67 74 72
2000–2008 59 62 54 62
52 58 69
Less Inborn Ability 1977–1989 16 31 9
4 8 12 26
1990–1999 11 16 12 6
10 8 15
2000–2008 13 23 13 8 11
11 17
Lack of Chance 1977–1989 68 69 65
70 63 68 75
for Education 1990–1999 60 63 61
57 55 55 72
2000–2008 52 56 46 55 47
50 61
Lack of Motivation 1977–1989 35 44 34
26 30 33 44
or Willpower 1990–1999 38 43 40
33 45 32 38
2000–2008 44 51 50 38

42. 49 42 42
Respondents were asked, “On the average
(Negroes/Blacks/African-Americans) have worse jobs, income,
and housing than white people. Do you think these differences
are”: “mainly due to discrimination”;
“because most (Negroes/Blacks/African-Americans) have less
inborn ability to learn”; “because most
(Negroes/Blacks/African-Americans) don’t have the chance for
education that it takes to rise out of
poverty”; or “because most (Negroes/Blacks/African-
Americans) just don’t have the motivation or
willpower to pull themselves up out of poverty?” N for whites
ranges between 5,307 and 16,906. N for
blacks ranges between 517 and 2,387. Source: Author’s analysis
of data from General Social Survey,
1977–2008.
likely than whites to endorse structural
accounts of racial inequality, particularly
the strongest attribution of discrimina-
tion. However, like their white counter-
parts, a declining number of blacks point
to discrimination as the key factor, and
there is actually a rise in the percentage
of African Americans attributing racial
inequality to a lack of motivation or will-
power on the part of blacks themselves.
More detailed multivariate analyses sug-
gest that there has been growth in cultur-
al attributions for racial inequality. Among
African Americans this growth seems
most prominent among somewhat young-
er, ideologically conservative, and less

43. well-educated individuals.29
Another line of analysis of racial atti-
tudes sparked in part by the principle-
implementation gap involved renewed
interest in the extent of negative racial
stereotyping. Figure 7 shows trends in
whites’ stereotype trait ratings of whites
as compared to blacks on the dimensions
of being hardworking or lazy and intelli-
gent or unintelligent. In 1990, when these
trait-rating stereotype questions were ½rst
posed in national surveys, more than 60
percent of whites rated whites as more
likely to be hardworking than blacks, and
just under 60 percent rated blacks as less
intelligent. A variety of other trait dimen-
sions were included in this early assess-
ment, such as welfare dependency, in-
volvement in drugs and gangs, and levels
of patriotism. Whites usually expressed
a substantially negative image of blacks
relative to how they rated whites across
this array of traits. The trends suggest
some slight reduction in negative stereo-
typing over the past two decades, but
such negative images of blacks still re-
Lawrence D.
Bobo
140 (2) Spring 2011 27
Figure 7
Percent of Respondents Who Said Whites Are More

44. Hardworking or More Intelligent
than Blacks, 1990 to 2008
White respondents were asked to rate blacks and whites
according to whether they thought blacks and whites
tended to be hardworking or lazy. Respondents were also asked,
“Do people in these groups tend to be unin-
telligent or tend to be intelligent? Where would you rate whites
in general on this scale? Blacks?” The com-
parison is generated by subtracting the scores whites are given
on a one to seven point scale from the scores
blacks are given on each measure. On the resulting scale,
positive numbers indicate that blacks are rated as
possessing more of the desirable trait than whites; negative
scores indicate that whites are rated more posi-
tively; and scores of zero indicate that both groups received
equal ratings. Negative scores were coded as
agreeing. Seven percent of whites rated blacks as more
hardworking than whites, and 6 percent rated blacks
as more intelligent. Source: Author’s analysis of data from
General Social Survey, 1990–2008.
main quite commonplace. To the extent
that unfavorable beliefs about the behav-
ioral characteristics of blacks have a bear-
ing on levels of support for policies de-
signed to bene½t blacks, these data imply,
and much evidence con½rms, that nega-
tive beliefs about blacks’ abilities and
behavioral choices contribute to low lev-
els of white support for signi½cant social-
policy interventions to ameliorate racial
inequality.30

45. A third and perhaps most vigorously
considered resolution of the principle-
implementation gap involves the hypoth-
esis that a new form of antiblack racism
is at the root of much white opposition
to policies aimed at reducing racial in-
equality. This scholarship has focused
largely on the emergence of attitudes
of resentment toward the demands or
grievances voiced by African Americans
and the expectation of governmental
redress for those demands and grievances.
Figure 8 shows trends for one question
frequently used to tap such sentiments;
respondents are asked to agree or dis-
agree with the statement, “Irish, Italian,
Jewish and many other minorities over-
came prejudice and worked their way
up. Blacks should do the same without
special favors.” Throughout the 1994 to
2008 time span, roughly three-fourths
of white Americans agreed with this as-
sertion. The ½gure shows no meaning-
ful trend, despite a slight dip in 2004:
the lopsided view among whites is that
blacks need to make it all on their own.31
Throughout the fourteen-year time
span, whites were always substantially
more likely to endorse this viewpoint
than blacks; however, not only did a non-
trivial number of blacks agree with it
(about 50 percent), but the black-white
gap actually narrowed slightly over time.
The meaning and effects of this type of

46. outlook vary in important ways depend-
28
Somewhere
between
Jim Crow
& Post-
Racialism
Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts &
Sciences
Figure 8
Percent of Respondents Agreeing with the Belief that Blacks
Should Overcome Prejudice without
Special Favors, 1994 to 2008
Respondents were asked, “Do you agree strongly, agree
somewhat, neither agree nor disagree, disagree some-
what, or disagree strongly with the following statement: Irish,
Italian, Jewish and many other minorities over-
came prejudice and worked their way up. Blacks should do the
same without special favors.” “Agree strongly”
and “agree somewhat” responses are coded as agreeing. Source:
Author’s analysis of data from General Social
Survey, 1994–2008.
ing on race, usually carrying less potent
implications for policy views among
blacks than among whites. Indeed, one
reason for focusing on this type of atti-

47. tude is that it and similar items are found
to correlate with a wide range of social-
policy outlooks. And some evidence sug-
gests that how attitudes and outlooks
connect with partisanship and voting
behavior may be strengthening and
growing.32
Judged by the trends considered here and
in the essays in this volume, declarations
of having arrived at the post-racial mo-
ment are premature. Much has changed
–and unequivocally for the better–in
light of where the United States stood in
1965. Indeed, I will speculate that none
of the contributors to the 1965/1966 Dæda-
lus volumes would have considered likely
changes that have now, a mere four or so
decades later, been realized, including the
election of an African American President
of the United States, the appointment of
the ½rst black Chair of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, and the appointment of two differ-
ent African American Secretaries of State.
Similarly, the size and reach of today’s
black middle class were not easy to fore-
cast from the scholarly perch of mid-1960s
data and understandings. At the same
time, troublingly entrenched patterns of
poverty, segregation, gaps in educational
attainment and achievement, racial iden-
tity formation, and disparaging racial
stereotypes all endure into the present,
even if in somewhat less extreme forms.
And the scandalous rise in what is now
termed racialized mass incarceration

48. was not foreseen but now adds a new
measure of urgency to these concerns.
The very complex and contradictory
nature of these changes cautions against
the urge to make sweeping and simple
declarations about where we now stand.
But our nation’s “mixed” or ambiguous
circumstance–suspended uncomfortably
somewhere between the collapse of the
Jim Crow social order and a post-racial
social order that has yet to be attained–
gives rise to many intense exchanges over
whether or how much “race matters.”
This is true of scholarly discourse, where
many see racial division as a deeply en-
trenched and tragic American flaw and
many others see racial division as a wan-
ing exception to the coming triumph of
American liberalism.33
Average Americans, both black and
white, face and wage much of the same
debate in their day-to-day lives. One way
of capturing this dynamic is illustrated
in Figure 9, which shows the percentage
of white and black respondents in a 2009
national survey that asked, “Do you think
that blacks have achieved racial equality,
will soon achieve racial equality, will not
achieve racial equality in your lifetime,
or will never achieve racial equality?”
Fielded after the 2008 election and the
inauguration of Obama in early 2009,
these results are instructive. Almost two

49. out of three white Americans (61.3 per-
cent) said that blacks have achieved ra-
cial equality. Another 21.5 percent of
whites endorse the view that blacks will
soon achieve racial equality. Thus, the
overwhelming fraction of white Ameri-
cans see the post-racial moment as effec-
tively here (83.8 percent). Fewer than
one in ½ve blacks endorsed the idea that
they have already achieved racial equali-
ty. A more substantial fraction, 36.2 per-
cent, believe that they will soon achieve
racial equality. African Americans, then,
are divided almost evenly between those
doubtful that racial equality will soon be
achieved (with more than one in ten say-
ing that it will never be achieved) and
those who see equality as within reach,
at 46.6 percent versus 53.6 percent.34
These results underscore why discus-
sions of race so easily and quickly be-
29
Lawrence D.
Bobo
140 (2) Spring 2011
come polarized and fractious along ra-
cial lines. The central tendencies of pub-
lic opinion on these issues, despite real
increasing overlap, remain enormously

50. far apart between black and white Amer-
icans. When such differences in percep-
tion and belief are grounded in, or at least
reinforced by, wide economic inequality,
persistent residential segregation, large-
ly racially homogeneous family units and
close friendship networks, and a popular
culture still suffused with negative ideas
and images about African Americans,
then there should be little surprise that
we still ½nd it enormously dif½cult to
have sustained civil discussions about
race and racial matters. Despite growing
much closer together in recent decades,
the gaps in perspective between blacks
and whites are still sizable.
The ideas and evidence marshaled in
this Dædalus issue should help sharpen
our focus and open up productive new
lines of discourse and inquiry. Four of
the essays directly engage central, but
changing, features of racial strati½cation
in the United States. Sociologist Douglas
S. Massey provides a trenchant, broad
map of change in the status of African
Americans. Sociologist William Julius
Wilson reviews and assesses his ½eld-
de½ning argument about the “declining
signi½cance of race.” The core frame-
work is sustained, he maintains, by much
subsequent careful research; but Wilson
stresses now the special importance of
employment in the government sector
to the economic well-being of many

51. African Americans. Economist James J.
Heckman focuses on education, building
the case for enhancing the capacities of
families and communities to prepare
children to get the most out of school-
ing. Social psychologist Richard E. Nis-
30
Somewhere
between
Jim Crow
& Post-
Racialism
Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts &
Sciences
Figure 9
Whites’ and Blacks’ Beliefs about when Racial Equality will be
Achieved
Respondents were asked, “Do you think that blacks have
achieved racial equality, will soon achieve
racial equality, will not achieve racial equality in your lifetime,
or will never achieve racial equality?”
Source: Lawrence D. Bobo and Alicia Simmons, Race Cues,
Attitudes and Punitiveness Survey
(Data Collected by Polimetrix), Department of Sociology,
Harvard University, July 2009.
bett looks closely at the types of early

52. intervention strategies that evidence
suggests are most likely to improve
ultimate educational attainment and
achievement.
Three essays put the changing status
of African Americans in more explicit
political, policy-related, and legal per-
spectives. Political scientist Rogers M.
Smith and his colleagues identify the
pivotal role played by agents of compet-
ing racial policy coalitions, pointing to
the differing agendas and degrees of
political success and influence of those
pursuing a color-blind strategy and
those pursuing a color-conscious strate-
gy. Legal scholar Michael J. Klarman
challenges the presumption that the U.S.
Supreme Court has been a special ally or
supporter of African American interests
and claims. He suggests that the Court
has often, particularly in a string of re-
cent rulings, tilted heavily in the direc-
tion of a color-blind set of principles
that do little to advance the interests of
black communities. Political scientist
Daniel Sabbagh traces the impetus for
af½rmative action and its evolution in
the United States and compares that to
how af½rmative action is now pursued
in a number of other countries.
Several essays examine the cultural
dynamics of race and racial identities.
Anthropologists Marcyliena Morgan
and Dionne Bennett examine the re-

53. markable dynamism, worldwide spread,
and influence of hip-hop music. Social
psychologists Jennifer A. Richeson and
Maureen A. Craig examine the psycho-
logical dynamics of identity choices fac-
ing minority communities and indi-
viduals in this era of rapid population
change. Political scientist Jennifer L.
Hochschild and her colleagues assess
how younger cohorts of Americans are
bringing different views of race and its
importance to politics and social life.
Three essays pivot off the 2008 presi-
dential election. Political scientist Taeku
Lee examines the complex role of race,
group identity, and immigrant status in
forging new political identities, coalitions,
and voting behavior. Political scientist
Cathy J. Cohen shows the continuing
racial consciousness and orientations
of black youth. Sociologist Alford A.
Young, Jr., examines the special mean-
ing of Obama’s candidacy and success
for young black men.
Two ½nal essays push in quite different
directions. Sociologist Roger Waldinger
argues that even as the black-white divide
remains an important problem, we as a
nation are facing deep contradictions in
how we deal with immigration and im-
migrants themselves, particularly those
coming from Latin America. Historian
Martha Biondi muses on continuities
with and departures from past traditions

54. in recent discourse surrounding the mis-
sion of African American studies pro-
grams and departments.
This issue is a companion volume to
the Winter 2011 issue of Dædalus, Race
in the Age of Obama, guest edited by
Gerald Early, the Merle Kling Professor
of Modern Letters and Director of the
Center for the Humanities at Washing-
ton University in St. Louis. It has been
my privilege to work with Gerald on
this project, and I am grateful to the
contributors to this volume for their
informed analyses.
This essay’s epigraphs from Martin
Luther King, Jr., John Hope Franklin,
and Barack Obama, each in its own fash-
ion, remind us of the depth and com-
plexity of race in the United States.
Although it is tempting to seek quick
and simple assessments of where we
have been and where we are going, it
is wise, instead, to wrestle with taking
stock of all the variegated and nuanced
31
Lawrence D.
Bobo
140 (2) Spring 2011

55. circumstances underlying the black-white
divide and its associated phenomena. Just
as 1965 seemed a point of inflection, of
contradictory lines of development, fu-
ture generations may look back and regard
2011 as a similarly fraught moment. At
the same time that a nation celebrates
the historic election of an African Amer-
ican president, the cultural production
of demeaning antiblack images–post-
cards featuring watermelons on the White
House lawn prior to the annual Easter egg
roll, Obama featured in loincloth and with
a bone through his nose in ads denounc-
ing the health care bill, a cartoon showing
police of½cers shooting an out-of-control
chimpanzee under the heading “They’ll
have to ½nd someone else to write the
next stimulus bill”–are ugly reminders
of some of the more overtly racialized
reactions to the ascendancy of an Afri-
can American to the presidency of the
United States.
As a result of complex and contradic-
tory indicators, no pithy phrase or bold
declaration can possibly do justice to the
full body of research, evidence, and ideas
reviewed here. One optimistic trend is
that examinations of the status of blacks
have moved to a place of prominence and
sophistication in the social sciences that
probably was never imagined by found-
ing ½gures of the tradition, such as W.E.B.
Du Bois. That accumulating body of
knowledge and theory, including the

56. new contributions herein, deepens our
understanding of the experience of race
in the United States. The con½guration
and salience of the color line some ½fty
or one hundred years from now, however,
cannot be forecast with any measure of
certainty. Perhaps the strongest general
declaration one can make at present is
that we stand somewhere between a Jim
Crow past and the aspiration of a post-
racial future.
32
Somewhere
between
Jim Crow
& Post-
Racialism
Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts &
Sciences
endnotes
1 Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos
or Community? (New York:
Bantam, 1968), 19; John Hope Franklin, The Color Line:
Legacy for the 21st Century (Colum-
bia: University of Missouri Press, 1993), 36; Barack H. Obama,
“A More Perfect Union,”
speech delivered at the National Constitution Center,
Philadelphia, May 18, 2008.

57. 2 I wish to thank Alicia Simmons, Victor Thompson, and
Deborah De Laurell for their
invaluable assistance in preparing this essay. I am responsible
for any remaining errors
or shortcomings.
3 St. Clair Drake, “The Social and Economic Status of the
Negro in the United States,”
Dædalus 94 (4) (Fall 1965): 3–46; Daniel Patrick Moynihan,
“Employment, Income,
and the Ordeal of the Negro Family,” Dædalus 94 (4) (Fall
1965): 134–159.
4 See John McWhorter, Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black
America (New York: Free Press,
2000); and Charles Johnson, “The End of the Black American
Narrative,” The American
Scholar 77 (3) (Summer 2008).
5 See Hua Hsu, “The End of White America?” The Atlantic,
January/February 2009; and
Susan Saulny, “Black? White? Asian? More Young Americans
Choose All of the Above,”
The New York Times, January 29, 2011.
6 On laissez-faire racism, see Lawrence D. Bobo, James R.
Kluegel, and Ryan A. Smith,
“Laissez-Faire Racism: The Crystallization of a Kinder,
Gentler, Antiblack Ideology,” in
Racial Attitudes in the 1990s: Continuity and Change, ed.
Steven A. Tuch and Jack K. Martin
(Greenwood, Conn.: Praeger, 1997), 15–44; on modern or
symbolic racism, see David O.
Sears, “Symbolic Racism,” in Eliminating Racism: Pro½les in
Controversy, ed. Phyllis A. Katz

58. 33
Lawrence D.
Bobo
140 (2) Spring 2011
and Dalmas A. Taylor (New York: Plenum Press, 1988), 53–84;
and on color-blind racism,
see Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Racism without Racists: Colorblind
Racism and Racial Inequality in
Contemporary America (Boulder, Colo.: Rowman and
Little½eld, 2010).
7 See C. Matthew Snipp, “De½ning Race and Ethnicity: The
Constitution, the Supreme
Court, and the Census,” in Doing Race: 21 Essays for the 21st
Century, ed. Hazel R. Markus
and Paula M.L. Moya (New York: W.W. Norton, 2010), 105–
122. It is noteworthy that
Obama himself checked only the “Black” category rather than
marking more than one
race on his 2010 Census form.
8 On the history of “mixing” in the United States, see Gary B.
Nash, “The Hidden History of
Mestizo America,” Journal of American History 82 (1995):
941–964; and Victor Thompson,
“The Strange Career of Racial Science: Racial Categories and
African American Identity,”
in The Oxford Handbook of African American Citizenship, ed.
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., et al.
(New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).

59. 9 David A. Hollinger, “Amalgamation and Hypodescent: The
Question of Ethnoracial Mix-
ture in the History of the United States,” American Historical
Review 108 (December 2003):
1305–1390.
10 Melissa R. Herman, “Do You See Who I Am?: How
Observers’ Background Affects the
Perceptions of Multiracial Faces,” Social Psychology Quarterly
73 (2010): 58–78; see also
Arnold K. Ho, Jim Sidanius, Daniel T. Levin, and Mahzarin R.
Banaji, “Evidence for Hypo-
descent and Racial Hierarchy in the Categorization and
Perception of Biracial Individuals,”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 94 (2010): 1–15.
11 Vincent Kang Fu, “How Many Melting Pots?: Intermarriage,
Panethnicity, and the Black/
Non-Black Divide in the United States,” Journal of Comparative
Family Studies 38 (2007):
215–237. On the point of a racial preference hierarchy, see
Vincent Kang Fu, “Racial
Intermarriage Pairings,” Demography 38 (2001): 147–159.
12 Zenchao Qian and Daniel T. Lichter, “Social Boundaries and
Marital Assimilation: Inter-
preting Trends in Racial and Ethnic Intermarriage,” American
Sociological Review 72 (2007):
68–94. See also Zenchao Qian, “Breaking the Last Taboo:
Interracial Marriage in Amer-
ica,” Contexts 4 (2005): 33–37.
13 Herbert J. Gans, “The Possibility of a New Racial Hierarchy
in the Twenty-First Century
United States,” in The Cultural Territories of Race: Black and
White Boundaries, ed. Michèle

60. Lamont (New York: Russell Sage, 1999), 371–390; and Frank
D. Bean et al., “The New
U.S. Immigrants: How Do They Affect Our Understanding of
the African American Expe-
rience?” Annals of the American Academy of Political and
Social Science 621 (2009): 202–220.
For closely related discussions, see Mary C. Waters, Black
Identities: West Indian Immigrant
Dreams and American Realities (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1999); and
Milton Vickerman, “Recent Immigration and Race: Continuity
and Change,” Du Bois
Review 4 (2007): 141–165.
14 See Bart Landry, The New Black Middle Class (Berkeley:
University of California Press,
1987); Karyn Lacy, Blue Chip Black: Race, Class and Status in
the New Black Middle Class
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007); and Mary
Pattillo, Black on the Block:
The Politics of Race and Class in the City (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 2007).
15 See Michael A. Stoll, “African Americans and the Color
Line,” in The American People:
Census 2000, ed. Reynolds Farley and John Haaga (New York:
Russell Sage, 2005), 380–
414, esp. 395; and Lawrence D. Bobo, “An American
Conundrum: Race, Sociology, and
the African American Road to Citizenship,” in The Oxford
Handbook of African American
Citizenship, ed. Gates.
16 Christian E. Weller, Jaryn Fields, and Folayemi Agbede,
“The State of Communities
of Color in the U.S. Economy” (Washington, D.C.: Center for

61. American Progress,
January 21, 2011),
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/01/coc_snapshot
.html/print.html (accessed January 23, 2011).
34
Somewhere
between
Jim Crow
& Post-
Racialism
Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts &
Sciences
17 William Julius Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner
City, the Underclass, and Public
Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987); William
Julius Wilson, When Work
Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor (New York:
Knopf, 1996); and Robert J.
Sampson, “Urban Black Violence: The Effect of Male
Joblessness and Family Disruption,”
American Journal of Sociology 93 (1987): 348–382.
18 Patrick Sharkey, “The Intergenerational Transmission of
Context,” American Journal of
Sociology 113 (4): 931–969. See also Tom Hertz, “Rags,
Riches, and Race: The Intergenera-
tional Economic Mobility of Black and White Families in the
United States,” in Unequal

62. Chances: Family Background and Economic Success, ed.
Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis, and
Melissa Osborne Groves (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press, 2005).
19 See Michael B. Katz, Mark J. Stern, and Jamie J. Fader, “The
New African American
Inequality,” The Journal of American History 92 (1) (2005): 75–
108.
20 Linda Darling Hammond, “The Color Line in American
Education: Race, Resources, and
Student Achievement,” Du Bois Review 1 (2004): 213–246; and
Linda Darling Hammond,
“Structured for Failure: Race, Resources, and Student
Achievement,” in Doing Race, ed.
Markus and Moya, 295–321.
21 Alfred Blumstein, “Race and Criminal Justice,” in America
Becoming: Racial Trends and
Their Consequences, Volume II, ed. Neil J. Smelser, William
Julius Wilson, and Faith Mitchell
(Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2001), 21–31;
and Pew Center on the
States, “One in 100: Behind Bars in America 2008”
(Washington, D.C.: Pew Charitable
Trusts, 2008).
22 Generally, see Bruce Western, Punishment and Inequality in
America (New York: Russell
Sage, 2006). On changes in the normative life trajectories, see
Becky Pettit and Bruce
Western, “Mass Imprisonment and the Life-Course: Race and
Class Inequality in U.S.
Incarceration,” American Sociological Review 69 (2004): 151–
169. On the social costs of

63. heavy police scrutiny of poor neighborhoods, see Loïc
Wacquant, “Deadly Symbiosis:
When Ghetto and Prison Meet and Mesh,” Punishment and
Society 3 (2001): 95–135;
and Alice Goffman, “On the Run: Wanted Men in a Philadelphia
Ghetto,” American
Sociological Review 74 (2009): 339–357. On the rising
incarceration rates for blacks more
broadly, see Lawrence D. Bobo and Victor Thompson,
“Racialized Mass Incarceration:
Poverty, Prejudice, and Punitiveness,” in Doing Race, ed.
Markus and Moya, 322–355;
and Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass
Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
(New York: The New Press, 2010).
23 Generally, see Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton,
American Apartheid: Segregation and
the Making of the Underclass (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1993); Camille
Z. Charles, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?: Race, Class, and
Residence in Los Angeles (New York:
Russell Sage, 2006); Robert J. Sampson, “Seeing Disorder:
Neighborhood Stigma and the
Social Construction of ‘Broken Windows,’” Social Psychology
Quarterly 67 (2004): 319–342;
Maria Krysan, Mick Couper, Reynolds Farley, and Tyrone A.
Forman, “Does Race Matter
in Neighborhood Preferences? Results from a Video
Experiment,” American Journal of So-
ciology 115 (2) (2009): 527–559; and Devah Pager and Hana
Shepherd, “The Sociology of
Discrimination: Racial Discrimination in Employment, Housing,
Credit, and Consumer
Markets,” Annual Review of Sociology 34 (2008): 181–209.

64. 24 Melvin L. Oliver and Thomas M. Shapiro, Black
Wealth/White Wealth: A New Perspective
on Racial Inequality (New York: Routledge, 1995); Dalton
Conley, Being Black, Living in the
Red: Race, Wealth, and Social Policy in America (Berkeley:
University of California Press,
1999); and Thomas M. Shapiro, The Hidden Cost of Being
African American: How Wealth
Perpetuates Inequality (New York: Oxford University Press,
2004).
25 Thomas M. Shapiro, Tatjana Meschede, and Laura Sullivan,
“The Racial Wealth Gap
Increases Fourfold,” Research and Policy Brief, Institute on
Assets and Social Policy,
Heller School for Social Policy and Management, Brandeis
University, May 2010.
35
Lawrence D.
Bobo
140 (2) Spring 2011
26 See Ira Katznelson, When Af½rmative Action Was White:
An Untold Story of Racial Inequality
in Twentieth-Century America (New York: W.W. Norton,
2005).
27 I owe much of this discussion of racial attitudes to Howard
Schuman, Charlotte Steeh,
Lawrence D. Bobo, and Maria Krysan, Racial Attitudes in
America: Trends and Interpretations

65. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997). See also
Lawrence D. Bobo, “Racial
Attitudes and Relations at the Close of the Twentieth Century,”
in America Becoming:
Racial Trends and Their Consequences, Volume 1, ed. Neil J.
Smelser, William Julius Wilson,
and Faith Mitchell (Washington, D.C.: National Academies
Press, 2001), 264–301; and
Maria Krysan, “From Color Caste to Color Blind?: Racial
Attitudes Since World War II,”
in The Oxford Handbook of African American Citizenship, ed.
Gates.
28 Important early work on attributions for racial inequality
appears in Howard Schuman,
“Sociological Racism,” Society 7 (1969): 44–48; Richard
Apostle et al., The Anatomy of
Racial Attitudes (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1983); James R. Kluegel and
Eliot R. Smith, Beliefs About Inequality: Americans’ Views of
What Is and What Ought to Be
(New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1986); Paul M. Sniderman and
Michael G. Hagen, Race
and Inequality: A Study in American Values (Chatham, N.J.:
Chatham House, 1985); and
James R. Kluegel “Trends in Whites’ Explanations of the Black-
White Gap in Socio-
economic Status, 1977–1989,” American Sociological Review
55 (1990): 512–525.
29 Matthew O. Hunt, “African-American, Hispanic, and White
Beliefs about Black/White
Inequality, 1977–2004,” American Sociological Review 72
(2007): 390–415; Lawrence D.
Bobo et al., “The Real Record on Racial Attitudes,” in Social
Trends in the United States

66. 1972–2008: Evidence from the General Social Survey, ed. Peter
V. Marsden (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, forthcoming).
30 On the stereotype measures, see Tom W. Smith, “Ethnic
Images,” gss Technical Report
No. 19 (Chicago: National Opinion Research Center, 1990); and
Lawrence D. Bobo and
James R. Kluegel, “Status, Ideology, and Dimensions of Whites’
Racial Beliefs and Attitudes:
Progress and Stagnation,” in Racial Attitudes in the 1990s, ed.
Tuch and Martin, 93–120.
On the stereotype connection to public policy views, see Martin
I. Gilens, Why Americans
Hate Welfare: Race, Media, and the Politics of Antipoverty
Policy (Chicago: University of Chi-
cago Press, 1999); Lawrence D. Bobo and James R. Kluegel,
“Opposition to Race-Targeting:
Self-Interest, Strati½cation Ideology, or Racial Attitudes?”
American Sociological Review 58
(1993): 443–464; and Steven A. Tuch and Michael Hughes,
“Whites’ Racial Policy Atti-
tudes,” Social Science Quarterly 77 (1996): 723–745.
31 For one excellent empirical report, see David O. Sears,
Collette van Larr, Mary Carillo,
and Rick Kosterman, “Is It Really Racism?: The Origins of
White American Opposition
to Race-Targeted Policies,” Public Opinion Quarterly 61 (1997):
16–53. For a careful review
and assessment of debates regarding the new racism hypothesis,
see Maria Krysan, “Preju-
dice, Politics, and Public Opinion: Understanding the Sources
of Racial Policy Attitudes,”
Annual Review of Sociology 26 (2000): 135–168.

67. 32 For a discussion of the growing role of such resentments in
partisan outlooks and political
behavior, see Nicholas A. Valentino and David O. Sears, “Old
Times There Are Not For-
gotten: Race and Partisan Realignment in the Contemporary
South,” American Journal of
Political Science 49 (2005): 672–688. For differential effects by
race, see Lawrence D. Bobo
and Devon Johnson, “A Taste for Punishment: Black and White
Americans’ Views on the
Death Penalty and the War on Drugs,” Du Bois Review 1
(2004): 151–180.
33 Those representative of the “deeply rooted racial flaw” camp
would include Derrick Bell,
Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism
(New York: Basic Books, 1992);
Andrew Hacker, Two Nations: Black and White: Separate,
Hostile, Unequal (New York: Scrib-
ner, 1992); Donald R. Kinder and Lynn M. Sanders, Divided by
Color: Racial Politics and Demo-
cratic Ideals (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996);
Charles W. Mills, The Racial Con-
tract (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1997); Joe R.
Feagin, Racist America: Roots, Cur-
rent Realities, and Future Reparations (New York: Routledge,
2000); Michael K. Brown et al.,
36
Somewhere
between
Jim Crow

68. & Post-
Racialism
Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts &
Sciences
White-Washing Race: The Myth of a Color-Blind Society
(Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2003); and Douglas S. Massey, Categorically Unequal:
The American Strati½cation Sys-
tem (New York: Russell Sage, 2006). Those representative of
the “triumph of American
liberalism” camp would include Nathan Glazer, “The
Emergence of an American Ethnic
Pattern,” in From Different Shores: Perspectives on Race and
Ethnicity in America, ed. Ronald
Takaki (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 11–23;
Orlando Patterson, The Ordeal
of Integration: Progress and Resentment in America’s “Racial”
Crisis (Washington, D.C.: Basic
Civitas, 1997); Paul M. Sniderman and Edward G. Carmines,
Reaching Beyond Race (Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997); Abigail
Thernstrom and Stephan Thern-
strom, America in Black and White: One Nation, Indivisible
(New York: Simon & Schuster,
1997); and Richard D. Alba, Blurring the Color Line: The New
Chance for a More Integrated
America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2009).
34 These numbers point to a sharp rise in the percentage of
white Americans endorsing the
view that we have or will soon achieve racial equality; the
½gure rose from about 66 per-
cent in 2000 to over 80 percent in 2009. A similar increase

69. occurred among blacks: while
27 percent endorsed this view in 2000, the ½gure rose to 53
percent in 2009; thus, it nearly
doubled. The 2000 survey allowed respondents to answer,
“Don’t know”; the 2009 survey
did not. These percentages are calculated without the “don’t
know” responses. The 2000
results are reported in Lawrence D. Bobo, “Inequalities that
Endure? Racial Ideology, Amer-
ican Politics, and the Peculiar Role of the Social Sciences,” in
The Changing Terrain of Race
and Ethnicity, ed. Maria Krysan and Amanda E. Lewis (New
York: Russell Sage, 2004),
13–42.
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PDF/X-1a:2001, uno standard ISO per lo scambio di contenuto
grafico. Per ulteriori informazioni sulla creazione di documenti
PDF compatibili con PDF/X-1a, consultare la Guida dell'utente
di Acrobat. I documenti PDF creati possono essere aperti con
Acrobat e Adobe Reader 4.0 e versioni successive.)
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grafische gegevens. Raadpleeg de gebruikershandleiding van
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